Episode 163: Why Great LinkedIn Posts Flop (And When to Run Them Back) | Story Snacks Series
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Should you ever repurpose an old post on LinkedIn?
Short answer: yep.
Slightly more annoying answer: it depends.
Before you copy, paste, and send that post back into the wild, figure out why it flopped the first time. Was it actually a good post the algorithm didn't push out? Or was the post itself a little off? Those are two very different problems.
In this Story Snack, Stacy gets into how she decides which posts deserve another shot, which need a tweak first, and which she'd leave alone.
Listen in to hear:
The one reason NOT to repost that Stacy isn't buying
How to distinguish a reach problem from a writing problem
When a few tweaks will do, and when you need more than that
Why her short Tuesday posts aren't just chopped-down versions of longer ones
What working with the LinkedIn algorithm right now
This is Story Snacks, a bite-sized series for fund managers who want to get better at strategic storytelling in under 20 minutes a week.
TRANSCRIPT
Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors.
[00:00:00] Stacy Havener: Craving more knowledge, but don't always have time to sit down for a five-course meal? Take a quick snack break with Story Snacks, bite-sized content to feed your funnel. Each short episode features Stacey digging into one question. This series has her talking stories, sales, and so much more. Oh, yeah. It's time for Story Snacks
[00:00:26] Reusing posts feels weird to us because we know what we've said every time we've said something, and we're like, "I already freaking said that." And if it didn't do well, I certainly don't wanna say it again, right? However, seven times to hear something one time. It takes people seven times to hear something for the first time, and that presumes that they've read every single post you've posted, which they have not.
[00:00:54] And so the first thing is typically the first place you would [00:01:00] go to repurpose would be posts that have done well, and you would tweak them a little bit. You'd want some space from it obviously, and you'd tweak it a little bit or update it if it's, you know, updatable, meaning I do a post about signing up for a triathlon and how scared I am, and then I do a post after I complete it, right?
[00:01:22] That's the sort of evolution of it. But there is also a school of thought that says, and, and this happens for me too, like I'll write a post and I'm like, "That should have been an awesome post, and it bombed, so whoop it." And that just means something in the post was off. Um, the hook, it was too long, it felt AI somewhere, and LinkedIn picked up on that.
[00:01:48] So there's lots of reasons or whatever. LinkedIn just has weird days where I've had posts where I'm like, "Oh my God, I don't even know. That post torpedoed. I don't know what I did." If you use a bad word, like [00:02:00] sometimes if I say shit or something, it doesn't like that. Okay? So if I was gonna say that, then I would have to use like an exclamation point for the I.
[00:02:09] Or if I wanna, you know, say something that's slightly-- I would like put all the words together. So I mean, I'm talking like it's weird. There's no rhyme or reason. But a post that should have done well and didn't Is a great post to try again. In general, my point of view for LinkedIn right now, and I am not a guru, this is just from experience anecdotally, shorter posts are a nice balance to longer ones.
[00:02:40] So if the only thing we're doing is writing really long posts, it is good to try to dial it back and do a shorter post. Um, for example, on Tuesdays I typically try to do a text-only post, but in order for those to work, I have found they need [00:03:00] to be really short and really punchy. So I'll do like a list, five mistakes fund managers make.
[00:03:08] Something that somebody can laugh, nod, save, send. It's short, it's easy to read, it's got a little bite to it. So if there were a long post and we had unpacked all those five things and it didn't do well, I might say, "Let's try just going really short with it," knocking all the ex-extraneous words out and just getting to the, to the meat of it.
[00:03:34] Typically, short posts do well. Typically now hooks that have I, it's basically lived experience, I or we, so first person hook with a number Meaning I went to the beach with my team, with my team of 14 people for eight hours, and this is my one big takeaway. [00:04:00] We should do this more, right? So you see, like, for whatever reason, that's what the algorithm is liking right now.
[00:04:08] Lived experience, first person, AI can't replicate that, and numbers. So I share all of that to say it doesn't make any sense, but sometimes it is good to go back to a post that had really good bones and really good meat to it and try to repurpose it again. I'm all for experimenting, so if, if we analyze it and we're like, "Hey, it, like, it had everything.
[00:04:33] Let's just try it again and see what happens," I'm down for an experiment. But I do like the idea of changing it slightly if it didn't do well. If it did really well, you could totally just let it rip again. But I, I personally like, it just feels better to me to change it slightly. Let's be real. No one wakes up and says, "I can't wait to build some operational infrastructure today."
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[00:05:51] Ultimus was built on people doing business with people. You get institutional strength combined with boutique-level service [00:06:00] without getting stuck in a phone tree of doom. If you're ready to simplify, scale, and start working with a team that feels like an extension of yours, check out billiondollarbackstory.com/ultimus.
[00:06:14] That's U-L-T-I-M-U-S. You've got the investment strategy, the vision, the track record. Now it's time to upgrade the engine behind it all with Ultimus This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. The information is not an offer, solicitation, or recommendation of any of the funds, services, or products, or to adopt any investment strategy.
[00:06:43] Investment values may fluctuate, and past performance is not a guide to future performance. All opinions expressed by guests on the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm. Managers' appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacy Havener or [00:07:00] Havener Capital Partners.
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